One problem with setting up personal telecommunications connections today is the difficulty of locating called individuals. This problem is partially alleviated by mobile telephone technology and radio paging systems. In one system, described in copending United States patent application Ser. No. 08/424,825 (docket no. Miska 4-5) assigned to the same assignee as the present application, a caller who places a call to a called party is held at a "meet me bridge" in the telephone network. The called party is alerted to the existence of the telephone call placed to him/her by, for example, a paging system. The called party then initiates a telephone call to the bridge where the caller's telephone call is being held. The two calls may then be connected, or bridged, so that the called party can speak to the calling party.
One problem with such a system is that system delays in transmitting the paging signal and the time required to establish the return telephone call are often longer than most callers are willing to wait. Furthermore, not all pages will be successfully received nor will all page recipients be situated so as to be able to place return telephone calls. Therefore, to ensure that there is ultimately at least some communication between the calling and called parties, the calling party may be connected to an alternate destination if it is determined that the caller's telephone call cannot presently be connected to the called party, e.g., after a particular time period has passed and a return telephone call has not yet been received, or if the called party's telephone number is busy. The alternate destination may be, for example, a secretary, an answering service, or a voice messaging system. One problem with such a system is that, if the return telephone call is received after the caller's telephone call is connected to an alternate destination but before the caller terminates the call, the called party's return telephone call is nevertheless not connected to the caller's telephone call. This is so because the caller's telephone call is considered completed upon connection with the alternate destination.
Such a problem is overcome by the system described in copending United States patent application Ser. No. 08/264,651 (docket no. Foladare 4-5-2-6-2-14) assigned to the same assignee as the present application. In that system, upon receipt of an indication that the called party is available for a caller's telephone call, e.g., receipt of a return telephone call, the caller's telephone call is disconnected from the alternate destination and, instead, is connected to the called party, e.g., to the called party's return telephone call. This system interrupts the connection between the caller and the alternate destination and connects the caller and the called party.